2019 Policy Agenda Priorities

 

2019 Policy Agenda

New Mexico Job's Package

Presented in Alphabetical Order by Committees

Agriculture and Food Processing: 

• Seed standardization legislation to ensure the consistent statewide regulation of seeds;
• ACI Supports reinstating the requirement that the New Mexico Department of Transportation erect and maintain fencing along state highways to prevent livestock from entering our public highways;
• Maintaining the integrity of predator control measures on both public and private lands;
• Addressing the feral/wild horse population in New Mexico and the New Mexico Livestock Board having jurisdiction to address the problem;
• Protecting the integrity of agriculture land valuation as currently exists in statute;
• Development of new visa and foreign worker programs that are more efficient than the existing H-2A program;
• Preserving the integrity of the workers' compensation system to ensure quick and efficient delivery of benefits to injured workers, to maximize medical rehabilitation and return-to-work outcomes at a fair cost to the employers, which will also foster business investment and job creation;
• Legislation requiring that all imported, processed foods, ready for consumption, meet the same standards as identified by the FDA for domestic processors;
• Maintaining funding for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture and extension services;
• Revising or eliminating regulations, both federal and state, that are not based on sound, objectively verifiable, scientific evidence;
• The existence, preservation, and promotion of a healthy hunting, fishing and outfitting industry.

Economic Development and Research & Development: 

• Full and increased investment in strategic economic development programs such as JTIP, LEDA, and the Rapid Workforce Development fund, as well as enhancing the tools available, such as the high wage jobs tax credit, to incentivize business investment, and job creation;
• Full and increased investment for the New Mexico Partnership, local economic development organizations, the New Mexico Economic Development Department, and the New Mexico Tourism Department, for marketing and promotional activities;
• Policies that increase broadband deployment in urban and rural areas by public-private partnerships and coordinated initiatives and legislative actions for shared infrastructure and access, tax policies and promotion of new technologies;
• Implementation of the local, state, and federal procurement codes in a consistent, efficient and transparent manner that allows companies in New Mexico to effectively compete in the procurement process;
• A sustainable process by which the state supports public-private investments to drive economic development;
• Proactive investments in robust infrastructure programs that are essential for economic growth and prosperity including roads and highways, water, sewer, power, natural gas, and advanced telecommunications.

Education and Workforce Development: 

• A statewide plan that directs and measures the efforts of public colleges and universities to increase educational attainment and expand research and economic development efforts in communities across the state;
• Quality child care and education programs that are focused on a child’s success in school, measure child outcomes and encourage continued training opportunities and other initiatives to retain staff in early childhood settings;
• Coordinated high school and college workforce development programs that address New Mexico's needs such as STEM, skilled trades, healthcare, job search and soft skills;
• Improved pathways for educators to advance in their licensure based on demonstrated classroom performance and outcomes;
• Equalized funding and continued accountability across the public education sector, including charter schools;
• Legislation to aid charter schools in obtaining funds for facilities;
• Ongoing workforce analysis to determine the number and level of skills needed for current employers, as well as those needed for future economic development, and widely disseminating this information;
• Educational initiatives that contribute to increasing the overall educational attainment of New Mexico’s populace, including more efficient transfer between institutions and increased access to alternative educational pathways;
• Efforts to ensure fiscal and program accountability at all levels for state-funded programs, from early childhood through higher education, rooted in student outcomes;
• Creative and innovative efforts to reduce school dropout rate and alternative ways to assess the effectiveness of schools that are created to serve dropouts;
• A sustainable plan for the lottery scholarship to maximize the state’s return on investment; and,
• Development of a teacher evaluation based on measurable student achievement and a policy that encourages continued training opportunities and training teachers.

Energy and Extractive Industries:

• Policies that provide for the commercially viable development of energy infrastructure, including roads, oil and natural gas pipelines, electric transmission lines, energy storage, and electric and natural gas distribution systems that will benefit end-use markets, including such things as natural gas and electric vehicles and smart-grid technologies; including the development of an interim storage facility for spent facility for spent nuclear fuel;
• Creation of stable and predictable financing that allows energy companies to fund a move to sustainable energy generation sources and to prioritize long-term energy solutions that are affordable and considerate of New Mexico’s fiscal environment;
• Standards or regulations, both on the state and federal level, based upon objectively verifiable and widely accepted science, which are commercially viable and encourage innovation, job creation, job retention, and emerging technologies;
• Continued growth of New Mexico’s energy and extractive industries through reasonable government policies, regulations and practice that are commercially-viable, predictable, time-sensitive and that encourage investment of private capital in New Mexico, and that result in private sector job creation;

• The development of promising new or continuing mineral extraction projects involving deposits of copper, garnet, potash, dolomite, zeolite, coal, uranium, rare earth elements, and other precious, specialty, and industrial minerals, as well as shale resources, all of which hold significant potential for bringing jobs and economic development to rural parts of New Mexico;
• Incentivizing the recycling and reuse of produced or otherwise available water, and removal of legal impediments to such activities; and,
• State management of natural resources, including water and minerals, rather than local government regulation, which could be used to restrict or preclude development, to the detriment of the state.

Entrepreneurship: 

• Opening the Angel Investment Tax Credit to out-of-state investors to increase the diversity pool of potential investors;
• Incentivizing New Mexico’s National Laboratories to create and continue community projects throughout the state, particularly those focused on technology transfer;
• Incorporation of computer science and computational thinking into New Mexico standards of learning;
• Creation of an Apprenticeship Job Creation Tax Credit;
• Incentivizing individuals to invest in a new or existing New Mexico company;
• Entrepreneurial mindset training as a component of the mandatory training for individuals drawing unemployment through the Department of Workforce Solutions;
• Continued investment in programs that focus on job creation, such as the Job Training Incentive Program (JTIP) and the Local Economic Development Act (LEDA); and
• Adoption of new technologies for broadband expansion.

Envrionment: 

• ACI supports placing a reasonable limit on fines and penalties that state or local governments may assess without court action;
• ACI supports reforming the regulatory and administrative process that eliminates delays in permit processing and promotes consistent, reasonable, and predictable administrative processes and enforcement procedures;
• Managing natural resources, including water and minerals, by the State rather than local governments, which could be used to restrict or preclude development, to the detriment of the state; and
• Evaluating relief measures for industry in Dona Ana County, given ozone NAAQS non-attainment designation due to pollution transport from El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico and withdrawing and replacing the Obama-era waters of the United States rules with more limited rules tailored to address issues in the arid West;
• Utilizing the State Volkswagen (VW) Settlement Plan to decrease transportation emissions by using the $18M in funds to replace standard commercial and fleet vehicles with cleaner emissions technology such as electric, clean diesel, and natural gas. Also, build out of Electric Vehicle infrastructure on main highway corridors across New Mexico.

Healthcare:

• Maximization of federal funds through actions such as fully funding the state Medicaid program and Safety Net Care Pool;
• Implementation of evidence based, transparent managed-care and care-management programs that promote appropriate use of medicines and reduce inappropriate utilization of limited healthcare resources, and, wherever possible, create electronic processes that will allow prior authorization to proceed expeditiously so that it does not adversely impact patient care;
• Enhancement of economically viable programs that ensure access to health care and coverage for all New Mexicans;
• Taking aggressive steps to ensure an adequate provider workforce to meet the increasing demands on the health care system and avert a looming crisis in provider access, particularly in areas of primary and behavioral healthcare;
• Efficient operation of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange with strong involvement from the business community;
• Healthcare management programs and policies to minimize premium cost impact on individuals, businesses, and carriers, and promoting and investing in processes that improve the management of chronic diseases/conditions in an outpatient setting to decrease unneeded hospitalization;
• Improvements to the health care system and Centennial Care which ensure cost-efficiency with sustainable provider funding and re-aligned incentives;
• Take a phased and collaborative approach to replacing fee-for-service medicine with more effective, value-based, alternative payment models;
• Outcome-based health care that promote the best outcomes for individual patients while controlling costs and minimizing the adoption of burdensome regulatory policies;
• Providing sufficient reimbursement rates for federally funded programs to avoid cost-shifting to other publicly funded and commercial insurance plans; and,
• Initiatives that promote the appropriate use of opioids and other controlled substances to decrease the risk of dependency and combat overdose, by taking a multi-disciplinary clinical approach, which may include the use of evidence based medically appropriate forms of pain-management.

Regulatory and Government Accountability: 

• Legislation creating uniform and consistent agency adjudicatory procedures across all state administrative agencies, boards, and commissions to assure fairness and due process;
• Expansion of the Administrative Hearing Office to conduct hearings on administrative adjudicatory actions arising from all state agencies using its own qualified, professional, objective, and independent hearing officers or administrative law judges;
• Placing a reasonable limit on fines and penalties that state or local government agencies can assess in administrative enforcement actions; major civil penalty sanctions should only be imposed through the judicial process;
• Reformation of the plural executive system, by moving certain elective official functions to existing executive agencies and replacing certain elective officials with appointees.

Taxation: 

• Create a stable revenue source without a disproportionate burden on particular industries, individuals, or employers and in conjunction with a statewide economic development plan; and,
• Expansion of the single sales factor in the multi-state tax apportionment formula for corporate income tax;
• Improvements to the high-wage jobs tax credit that support its utilization for economic development in New Mexico.

Water and Land Use:

• The creation of public-private partnerships to develop water infrastructure that will provide public benefits, such as economical infrastructure project delivery and water conservation;
• Office of the State Engineer (OSE) in refining policies to provide clarity in the OSE’s application of administrative procedure;
• Efforts to promote Wildfire and Water Source Protection and urges the Legislature and Administration to work together and with diverse stakeholders to identify recurring funding for forest and watershed restoration;

• Updating the New Mexico State and Regional Water Plans with strong involvement from the business community;
• A regulatory structure that encourages the development of new water sources and the infrastructure to support those sources;
• Allowing the transfer of water across major basin boundaries when it meets the conditions promulgated by the (OSE);
• Regulations regarding land use and land use planning that reflect consideration of the negative economic impact of those regulations on the land owner, municipality, or business operation on the affected property; and,
• Active Water Resource Management (AWRM) rules which only include those limited measures necessary to protect senior water rights and compact delivery requirements;
• ACI supports the regulation and certification of non-navigable waters by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish as a means to discourage public trespass in waters located on private property.

Workplace Issues:

• Statewide uniformity of employment laws, such as paid or unpaid leave mandates, wage or fringe benefit mandates, and scheduling mandates; to provide a stable environment for employers and promote economic development;
• Initiatives to incentivize employers to voluntarily provide employees with family-friendly workplace policies;
• Preserving the integrity of the workers' compensation system to ensure the quick and efficient delivery of benefits to injured workers at a fair cost to employers and, fosters business investment and job creation;
• Repeal of New Mexico’s prevailing wage law on construction of public works projects;
• Uniform, clear, consistent, and fair employment laws, which include a minimum wage solution, at the federal or statewide level, that includes amendment to the New Mexico Minimum Wage Act; and
• Amending the Public Workers Minimum Wage Act to clearly define "Willful Violation.”